church

Call In Challenge: the Church & the World

May 14, 2013 by Bo Sanders 2 Comments

On the most recent TNT, Bo threw out a theory that the dichotomy between ‘Church & World’ doesn’t work well anymore.

Part of the thought came from the book Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective by Craig A. Carter which revisits Niebuhr’s influential 1951 work “Christ and Culture”.

Part of it came from The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words by Deborah Tannen, and part of it was a critique of The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas as well as Luther’s famous construct of the ’2 Kingdoms’.

The main point of contention is that what is now called ‘culture’ is a byproduct of Christendom (part of the church) and is therefore not the same thing that Paul was writing about in the New Testament. The church and the world are not entirely alien to each other. The church is filled with people from the culture and the culture is deeply impacted (or has been) by the church.

So when we quote passages like Romans 12: 1-2 to be not conformed to the world, we have a messier delineation of those categories – precisely BECAUSE they have bled into each other so thoroughly throughout history.

Callid had a different take on the issues as a Quaker. I hope that you will listen to the episode and give us your take!

What do we do with these categories in the 21st century? Go to the homepage and use the SpeakPipe on the right hand side of the screen to leave us an MP3 message for an upcoming TNT.

Filed Under: church history, latest, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, Culture, God, Hauerwas, history, jesus, Niebuhr, Stanley Hauerwas, world

God Is Not Like Me

May 12, 2013 by Bo Sanders 11 Comments

I grew up in a tradition that said I should be, as much as possible, like Jesus. I get that – and I try to do so.

Yesterday at the Loft LA I had the privilege to say 3 things (among many others) about God:

God is Black (from James Cone)
She Who Is (from Elizabeth Johnson)
God is a Fag ( from Bernard Brandon Scott)

It is interesting because I am none of these three things! I am not black, a women, or homosexual. It is interesting then to present these images of a God who is very much different than I am – even as we, as a community, are being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).

It is important that we acknowledge that God is not on the side of ‘the powers’ but of those in need of liberation – that it is equally as accurate and as inaccurate to call God ‘She’ and it is to call God ‘He’ – and that according to 2 Corinthians 5:21

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

This is a topsy-turvey business.

Over the last 20 years of ministry I have noticed a somewhat unsettling trend that in order to be like God, I have had to move away from many of the natural strengths that ‘God gave me’.

While I love to be at center stage in the spot light with a microphone – I am fascinated with the cell group, house church, and small group model of church. As a pentecostal, I am obsessed with how the Spirit of God is at work in the People of God.

While I am a big, hairy, muscular man – I am convinced that feminist theologian are right and that Christian history does not accurately reflect the will and mind of God for the world that God loves so much (John 3:16).

While I am white guy – I am writing my dissertation on ‘White Privilege’ and hoping to confront some of the systemic racism that will not do as we move into the 21st Century.

So while I attempt to be more like God, I am very aware that God is not all that much like me.

This is an important distinction. As C.S. Lewis said in his poem “A footnote to all prayers” (it references Pheidias who was a legendary statue maker in the ancient world):

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

When we pray, we by nature blaspheme – all of us. The reality is that language , by its nature, means that words are provisional. When the Hebrew Testament speaks of God as a ‘King’ or Martin Luther writes a hymn declaring “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” … these are analogies. They are metaphors. They are temporary place holders.

Anything that we say about God is (in the apophatic sense) both illustrative and, at the same time, not exactly all that accurate. We would do well to get used to saying :

“God is like X … and that, of course, is not exactly true.”

Philippians 2 is helpful at this point. The ‘Kenotic’ Move of Christ self-emptying and descending for the purpose of service, exhorts us to not hold onto anything too tightly (clinging/grasping) but to empty our certainty and expose all of our assumptions to that which is not natural to us. Not an easy task!

If we acknowledge, then, that all language is provisional… that it is just a accurate and as inaccurate to call God she or he… that any prayer is at some level blaspheming … and that I am called to be like God – though I know that God is not exactly like me … then I can begin a kenotic journey of recognizing God while releasing God from my pre-conceived notions.

This is the dynamic journey of faith: to recognize the full moon and the new moon, the high tide and low tide, the Fall and the Spring, the ebb and the flow, the fall and the rise of all that I am familiar with and and all that I am ignorant about. That is what we talk about when we talk about God.

Rob Bell puts it this way:

When we talk about God, then, we’re talking about something very real and yet beyond our conventional means of analysis and description.

The Germans, interestingly enough, have a word for this: they call it grenzbegrifflich. Grenzbegrifflich describes that which is very real but is beyond analysis and description.

When I’m talking about God, I’m talking about your intuitive sense that reality at its deepest flows from the God who is grenzbegriff.

Bell, Rob (2013-03-12). What We Talk About When We Talk About God (Kindle Locations 767-772). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I would love your feedback and reflections.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, conversations, emergent, engaging, latest, living, post-something, quotes, sermon, thinking Tagged With: Bernard Brandon Scott, Bible, book, books, C.S. Lewis, church, Elizabeth Johnson, feminist, gay, God, homosexual, James Cone, jesus, kenosis, Phil 2, prayer, Rob Bell, sin

TNT: Quaker Cast with Callid Keefe-Perry

April 13, 2013 by Bo Sanders 5 Comments

Welcome the newest Theology Nerd to the Homebrewed Team! Callid Keefe-Perry is a long-time friend of the podcast and a self-identified Hyper-Theist.

Subscribe on iTunes Here!

He is famous for his The Image of Fish blog and one of the ring-leaders of the Theopoetics working group at AAR.

Bo and Callid take a tour of Quaker history, the theological Anabaptist landscape, what the deal is with “Communal Discernment,” and whether or not Rob Bell is doing something bad by not having it.
They also wax poetic about why Practical Theology is the discipline that both he and Bo find a home in with the Academy.

You can hear Callid’s earlier appearance on the podcast from last year’s Wild Goose East Festival.

More stuff from Callid about Friends is over at the Jewels of Quakerism Project.

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Filed Under: latest, TNT Tagged With: anabaptist, Bible, book, books, Callid Keefe Perry, church, God, history, HyperTheist, jesus, philosophy, poetics, quaker, theology, theopoetics

Emergent Preaching?

April 12, 2013 by Bo Sanders 25 Comments

A good question can stimulate the brain to put together things that one had not previously connected. Stuart Harrell asked my a question about what a course on emergent “preaching” would look like. Here are some of my thought – I would love to hear yours.

My cleaned up tweets are posted as bullet-points with a clarifying thought following.

You would want to immediately address message and medium. It’s not just a repacking of the same old material.

What we are experiencing in a genuinely different expression of the good news. I watch lots of video clips of hip – fashionable – edgy young preachers who are still on an elevated stage using the exact same forms as the past 100 years … only they have added video clips and hair gel.

That is not what we are talking about. That is just lipstick on pig not that I really believe that old-school preaching is a pig, I just love that phrase.

#EmergentPreaching would involve scripture, culture, media, dialogue, experience & impartation to start.

The ‘problem’ with emergent thought is that it is neither reductive nor is it reproducible. It is environment specific (contextual) and organic. It interacts with its surroundings and emerges from its participants. It is a different animal from day 1.

I have given a LOT of thought to Emergent Preaching since my dad is a homiletics Prof. & I helped start The Loft LA recently.

One of our biggest glitches is that our ‘gatherings’ don’t translate to podcasts or video very well. We planned on being media savvy but the ‘sermon’ is broken up into conversation starters, dialogue, small groups, feedback and presentation. It’s kind of messy and we are still trying to figure out how to ‘capture’ it authentically. I think that we are going to start just throwing it out there unedited for members who missed that week in case they want to catch up.

the task of Emergent Preaching would deal with issues of power, voice, dialogue, participation, action, justice & cultural stuff.

This is where the medium must be addressed along with the message. HOW we do something is as important as WHAT we do.

Proclamation is a vital part of the Christian tradition. We don’t want to lose that! We address the form as well.

Why is there one person talking anyway? How is that person chosen? With what authority do they speak? These are essential questions to ask.

Assumptions of culture, the gospel, power, structures, and orthopraxy are vital to address in thinking about.

We are always attempting to do at least two things (this is true for every area of life). Side note: this is why saying that sex is only for procreation is ludicrous. So it is incumbent upon us to concern ourself with present cultural realities as well as desired outcomes – because we preach an incarnational gospel that must be in-bodied (embodied) to survive.

One would have to pull back the curtain & examine the scaffolding (assumptions) that hold the entire project up.

This is the tough job of deconstructing a constructive theology. There is no easy way around it.

It would be part Liberation, Feminism, Walter Wink, masters of suspicion, biblical scholarship & philosophy.

There is just no sense in even attempting to do proclamation in the 21st century under the auspices of emergence without this. Emergent Preaching would need to be well-informed and undeniably self-aware at some level. This seems unavoidable.

But it would also have to be rooted in history, hermeneutics, scripture and praxis. Those are my thoughts on Emergence Preaching.

In the end, we preach the christian gospel and not some form of god-ness or spirit-uality. We are the church after all. Accounting for history, hermeneutics, scripture and praxis is tall order. But what is the other option?

I would love to hear your thoughts on my little list and see if you had any additions.

You can also tweet me & and Stuart Harrell - use the hash-tag #EmergentPreaching

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, conversations, emergent, engaging, latest, living, sermon, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, Emergent, emerging, God, history, homiletics, jesus, preaching, science, The Loft LA

Jesus, the Cross and Another Way

April 10, 2013 by Bo Sanders 17 Comments

Guest post by Ken Alton -
one of the stars of the Easter Call-In Challenge TNT has sent us his thoughts from the northern forest of British Colombia, Canada.

Did God send Jesus to die on a cross? Did God send Jesus to die for our sins?

My reaction is to say no. God sent Jesus to save us.

And I want to say that there was a possibility, even way back in biblical times, that Israel, responding in human freedom, could have realized just who this Messiah was and got behind and between and caught up in the kin-dom, such that all nations would have been drawn to that light, that human flourishing and the kin-dom be proclaimed to the ends of the earth without there being a cross in the story.

I want to say that even with the Sanhedrin being all caught up in shoring up their hierarchy and religiosity, then Pilate and Herod could have responded, in human freedom, to the invitation of God in their ears at that moment, to the invitation of God standing right in front of them, and set Jesus free, not only set him free but got behind and between and caught up in the kin-dom and taken it to the ends off the earth in a different way, also without there being a cross in the story.

Jesus could have lived to a ripe old age, teaching thousands of brew-babies brought to him from miles around, sitting on a swing hanging from a tree to fulfill the prophecy. And after he died in his sleep, God still could have raised him from the grave and the lesson of new life could have been learned, and the giving of the Spirit could all have happened without a cross.

If none of that was a real possibility on Christmas morning, then something is wrong in how I understand our human freedom to say yes to Sophia’s divine wisdom whispered in each and every ear. I know we live in a world where the cross did happen. Thank God that cross is not the end of the story. Maybe if we spent less time focused on Jesus having to die for us, we could open ourselves to being able to live into that kin-dom that is always coming near, so near that it is among us even now.

Thoughts?
Questions?
Concerns?
Comments?

Tripp and I called it a ‘hat-trick’ and a ‘home-run’. What do you think?

Filed Under: bible stuff, engaging, latest, sermon, thinking Tagged With: Bible, call in, Canada, challenge, church, Easter, God, jesus, resurrection

TNT: Easter Call-In Challenge

April 9, 2013 by Bo Sanders 9 Comments

Subscribe on iTunes Here!

The deacons have responded to the challenge!

That is exactly what we were hoping for when we cooked up a little obstacle course around issue of crucifixion and resurrection. The callers navigate the obstacles with ease and in doing so get to show off some their best theological moves!

In this hour we hear from folks all the way from the forests of northern British Columbia, to the island of Jersey. In fact, we got calls from Africa, Asia, Australia and Eastern Europe.

Here is a hand-selected sample to showcase a variety of approaches.

We want to thank everyone who called in and all of those that made donations to help support the podcast!

You can read the link to the original challenge here if you need to get up to speed.

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Filed Under: bible stuff, conversations, latest, thinking, TNT Tagged With: atonement, Bible, book, books, challenge, church, crucifixion, Easter, Global, God, history, jesus, response, resurrection, Understanding

Beauty, Bodies and Blunders

April 5, 2013 by Bo Sanders 28 Comments

President Obama got in some hot water for a compliment he paid California Attorney General Kamala Harris. He said:

You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake. She also happens to be by far the best-looking attorney general in the country — Kamala Harris is here. (Applause.) It’s true. Come on. (Laughter.) And she is a great friend and has just been a great supporter for many, many years. [via The Los Angeles Times]

A remark like that is never going to go over well. It was just one sentence but we could talk for days about it!

I know that I am an odd bird in that I often see the silver lining in things that other people think are really bad – like taking the Lord’s name in vain. I like that people do it. It means that the name of God still carries some gravity. No one is cursing Thor when they smash their thumb with a hammer. No one is blaspheming Zeus when they get cut off in traffic. Anyway …

I was happy to see the outrage and level of outcry over the President’s remarks. I love when stuff like this happens outside the walls of the church and I think to myself “Ok, it’s not just us that are sensitive, reactive and protest-ant. Good, I was starting to worry”.

You have to forgive me. I come from a very muscular – testosterone – ‘Wild at Heart’ brand of Christianity. In the last decade I have migrated to a progressive – critical theory – ‘She Who Is’ brand of faith.

The thing that has been most difficult for me is to figure out what to do with the body.

As a contextual theologian and an Ancient-Future practitioner, I am deeply concerned with issues of incarnation and embodiment of the gospel. Our faith can not be merely intellectual, super-natural or institutional. Our faith must embodied, or in-bodied and lived-out.

I have figured out, through 6 years of blogging, how to talk with conservative, evangelical, and charismatic Christians about almost everything related to faith and practice in ways that they can hear. The issues of sexuality remain the most illusive.

The problem seems to relate to a giant pot-hole in the road to understanding that is so treacherous it almost doesn’t leave enough room to move without careening into the pit of ‘natural design’.

What complicates matter all the more is that there is a serious ditch on the other side of the road – one that was dug by Augustine’s legacy (I hate Augustine’s influence on church history) regarding the badness of the body, a specifically sexuality.

Here then is the issue: If I am talking about somebody and I’m listing all of that they bring to the table in areas of smarts, relationship, experience, and capacity … am I to act like they don’t have a flesh container? It asks me to act like they have no body.

Yes. That is what we want you to do. Jonathan Chait at New York explains:

For those who don’t see the problem here, the degree to which women are judged by their appearance remains an important hurdle to gender equality in the workforce. Women have a hard time being judged purely on their merits. Discussing their appearance in the context of evaluating their job performance makes it worse. It’s not a compliment. And for a president who has become a cultural model for many of his supporters in so many other ways, the example he’s setting here is disgraceful. [New York]

Even while I write this I can hear my more conservative Christian brothers saying “That is ridiculous! This is the sissy-fication of our culture.” To which I can only reply,”Yes. It is the leveling of a historically unequal playing field.”

I get why culturally, we don’t want the President even acknowledging her flesh container at all. We don’t want pastors commenting on congregant’s looks. I get it.

But as thinking christians, is anyone else worried about the implications for this kind of willful charade? Do we think that President Obama doesn’t see her? Are we under the impression that he doesn’t notice her beauty? Do we think that she, in her private moments, doesn’t want to be found attractive? Do we think that she doesn’t invest time and energy in her looks?

“It doesn’t matter! Just don’t say it. Not ever ever ever.” And I get that. What I am asking about is the ramifications for the embodied practices of the life of faith. What we have learned from church history (and reality TV)- from fundamentalist pastor’s daughters to celibate priests – is that repression of desires in one place (public) is bound to cause pressure which bubbles up some place else (private).

We have to break the ‘old boys network’ mentality. I get that. I am worried about the secondary effect of perpetuating a deadly dualism between body and mind/soul.

I clearly need help thinking this through. Anyone want to chime in on this?

Filed Under: church history, engaging, latest, media, news, politics, post-something, thinking Tagged With: Attorney General, Augustine, body, book, books, California, church, conservative, controversy, female, feminist, gender, God, hot water, image, incarnation, jesus, Kamala Harris, Liberal, looks, prayer, President Obama, sex, sexual, sexuality

The Problem With The New Pope

April 4, 2013 by Bo Sanders 20 Comments

It has been amazing to watch both the amount of reporting and the kind of reporting that Pope Francis’ style has drawn. You can find stories about him in major magazines, on every news website … even the Daily Show gave some hilarious attention to the hype.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I was on an Australian radio show the day of his election – they liked the angle that I had taken on my blog focusing on the Southern hemisphere. [I will put the 4 minute clip at the bottom of this post] I was on after the Australian Ambassador from Argentina.

Some of my co-workers are Catholic and Pope Francis’ dealing provide us with every-other-day content for our coffee-pot conversations. Even my wife, who is generally not that interested in such things, is into it.

She asked me, on a recent road trip after several news stories, why I thought people were so into Francis. I have three thoughts and would love to hear other’s thoughts.

There are still 1.6 Billion Catholics worldwide. That is 1/6 of everyone on the planet. Who is their leader matters a lot.

I know that not every Catholic listens to the Pope and that the Pope does not influence every thing … but it is still a big deal.

Between the elaborate displays of the Vatican and the global sex-abuse scandal – both of which are hard to figure out from reading the gospels – the Catholic church has been having a rough time of it in the court of public opinion.

Francis’ style is not just a breath of fresh air – it is substantially different. What he did on Maundy Thursday was not just a ‘break with tradition’, as reports kept repeating, but was significant. Washing & kissing prisoner’s feet instead of priest’s is not window dressing

Protestants seems to be fascinated with Pope-drama like Americans are fascinated with Royals. I don’t really get either.

It’s like we are enamored with the figure-head of the thing we left so long ago. I chalk it up to some sort of fetish thing for regal gowns, bejeweled crowns and antiquated (and sometimes secret) ceremonies.

There is one problem though. Protestants seem to want the Pope to be more protestant.

Almost all of the critique or concern I heard about him is something that would be more emblematic of protestant values or approaches. He is following the church’s traditional stance on (just to name 4):

Contraception
Celibacy
Women in ministry
Homosexuality

I want to holler at people when they are disappointed in this

“Of course he is – otherwise he wouldn’t have been elected Pope”.

It feels to me like somebody saying “I like the new Miss USA … I just wish she was built like a Linebacker in football.” Well … I hate to break it to you but that’s not going to happen. In fact, people who are built to play linebackers don’t make it to the Miss USA pageant. That is just not what the judges are looking for.

What I wish we would instead focus on is his economic dealings, immigration issues (he is the son of immigrants) and out-reach to non-Europeans. I continue to claim that just those 3 will make this a game-changer.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

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Filed Under: engaging, latest, media, news, thinking Tagged With: Argentina, Bible, book, books, Catholic, church, complain, critique, foot washing, Global South, God, jesus, Maundy Thursday, Pope Francis, Protestant, Southern hemisphere, tradition

Greg Boyd Is Not Emergent

April 3, 2013 by Bo Sanders 43 Comments

I love Twitter. It is the best (and fastest) way to catch a sense of what is going on and get updated on trending topics. It is truly amazing to see what some can do with 140 characters.

The other day I ‘eavesdropped’ on a really interesting exchange that was telling – in just 3 tweets.

Rob Davis ?@iamstillrob asks:

no offense, just an honest question: how has @greg_boyd been lumped into the “emergent” stream by so many people?

Jason Coker ?@Jason_A_Coker helpfully explains:

Only among those for whom “Emergent” = “Dangerous Theology” : )

Greg Boyd, the man in question, jumps in to answer for himself:

@Jason_A_Coker @iamstillrob I’m a critical realist & soft foundationalist & I find the extreme Epistemological relativists to be incoherent.

This is fantastic stuff. 3 things jump out at me:

1) While many emergent folks look to Boyd as a conversation partner, that is not the same as him being in the emergent camp. Boyd’s books The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church and Myth of a Christian Religion are wonderful (and you can give them to people as gifts). He is an Open Theist and has recently transitioned to Anabaptist identification. He is an interesting character no doubt … but he is not emergent.

He preaches like an old-time revivalist and will often go for 40 minutes. He stands on a stage in front of a packed auditorium and monologues in an elevated volume as if he forgot he was wearing a microphone. This guy is old school.

Which leads to my second point.

2) If Coker is right and emergent is used by some as a synonym for ‘dangerous’ it would explain why so many of the concerns/critiques of emergent-ish stuff fails to land with any meaningful connection. They don’t know what emergent is. That is so obvious that I may have missed it. Just last week I wrote:

I get challenged in nearly every place that I go about this term ‘emergent’. Now, to be fair, most people have never looked into the scientific theory of emergence - to them it is a brand like Baptist, or Catholic or Pentecostal. It could be called “Shock-zone Psycha-jazz” Church and mean just about as much to them.

All the same, the challenge often sounds like this:

“I hear 10 different definitions of the emergent church. It seems to mean on thing to this group and a different thing in this area.”

That is a fair question. But a better way to approach the topic might be to cut “emergent church” out of the sentence and paste “farming” in it’s place. How would you answer this question:

“I hear 10 different definitions of ‘farming’. It seems to mean on thing to this group and a different thing in this area.”

Not that hard right? Different soil, different climate, different water sources, different seeds mean that farming in one region can look entirely different from it does in another.

3) Boyd comes in with a “soft foundationalist vs. extreme Epistemological relativists” contrast. (Coker challenged this but got no reply). This is so telling! I wanted to say ,”oh… I see: one is ‘soft’ and other is ‘extreme’!”

That is the funny part about people trying to put Boyd in the emergent camp. Look, I really really like Greg Boyd. I think he is a fascinating person with tons of integrity and I respect him the world. But he is not emergent – by his own admission.

This is a guy who takes the time to explain that Angels needed training in the early centuries of the cosmos. Here is part of his defense of Ralph Winter’s gap theory of history to explain why there is no geological or paleontological evidence of a worldwide flood:

… God commissioned angelic beings to oversee aspects of nature and the production of life, similar to the way God later commissioned humans to have a domain of authority over nature and animals. These angels, he speculates, were “in training,” which in part perhaps explains why life evolved so slowly (from our human perspective). (Read Ps. 82 if you think angels are exempt from needing training).

I thank Rob Davis for asking such good questions and I really appreciate Boyd’s personal reply.
I just keep shaking my head at both the idea of cramming Boyd into the emergent mold and Boyd’s presumptuous response.
I thought it might be interesting to talk about here.

Filed Under: emergent, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: anabaptist, angels, Bible, book, books, church, Emergent, God, Greg Boyd, history, jesus, theology, theory, twitter

Jesu Babushka: the day after Easter

April 1, 2013 by Bo Sanders 7 Comments

Easter turns everything upside down. The temple veil is torn in two. The sealed stone is rolled away. The dead are made alive. In darkness we have seen the light. The powers are defeated.

I have friends who are transitioning back to paycheck & mortgage N. America after 15 years of international missions. For some reason they were on my mind all day as I went through the Easter services, egg hunt, and Loft gathering.

There is something about Easter that haunts me.

Our conceptions of God are so powerful and how they impact our life is so fascinating. I wrote a sermon about this several years ago while in the Ukraine: I call this aspect of God ’Jehovah Babushka’. I got it while watching an Ukrainian grandma (babushka) knead dough.
It’s like God is always punching into the dough our life - to break the crust of the outside and expose the raw stuff on the inside. Always turning us inside out to expose that which is in need of the air in order to develop and mash that which is crusty into softness again.

The story of Jesus does this too. He welcomes in those who had been on the outside or stuck on the periphery.
He pushes out those who assumed they were center.
He brought low the arrogant and the prideful.
He lifted up the lowly and the downtrodden.

He said it’s not about sacrifice or even law anymore.
He broke the crust of the old system to expose the loving heart of god to the world.
He turned the raw goo of the disciples out to the world as his public representatives on earth.
The spirit of god crashed in at Pentecost to turn upside down the priesthood.
Now we are all ministers.
The priesthood has been turned inside out and upside down.

God calls us to season of loneliness to expose our need of people. God uses tough encounters with people to show us something about ourselves and hopefully smash our conception of God – exposing the immature and underdeveloped while breaking in through the stale and crusty images we have allowed to become cliché.

Our idolatry of God is pressed out so our true identity can be pressed in.

With Jesus there is no longer a female-male divide. There is not slave – only free. Jews and Gentiles are both connected to God.
Jesus smashed those old crusty categories.
The faithfulness of Jesus (pistis christou) mashes our certainty that we are saved by having faith in Jesus and exposes the raw reality that we are called to participate in the faithfulness of Jesus and that is what brings salvation to the world.

Jesu Babushka kneads all the gas out of the dough – presses all the air pockets so that the finished product is fine and consistent.
All of this, of course, is only in preparation for the chemistry (yeast and rising) transformation to kick in and the eventual baking (heat) of the oven.

Who said faith was going to be easy? Or did you think Easter was all jelly beans and pretty dresses?

Filed Under: latest, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, bread, church, Easter, God, idol, idolatry, jesus, Pentecost, pistis christou, Spirit, Ukraine

Claremont School of Theology